Ads that Know Your Name: Magazines Push Further into Personalization

The March issue of Harper’s Bazaar arrived at 300,000 subscribers’ homes accompanied by a full-page flier greeting each subscriber by name and urging her to visit specific Neiman Marcus stores within 50 miles. The flier—called an “outsert” in industry jargon—follows a similar effort in Popular Mechanics’ November issue that included an individually personalized outsert promoting HP printers and a 16-page insert pointing readers to HP retailers near their homes.

Harper’s Bazaar and Popular Mechanics are both participating in Project Match, a collaboration between their parent company, Hearst, and HP, which has developed printing technology to enable faster, higher-quality personalized printing.